The present invention relates to acquisition, processing, and analysis of electro-biometric signals. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for electro-biometric identification and verification of a person's identity.
The present invention provides a system and method for electro-biometric identification and verification of a person's identity by bioelectric signal acquisition, processing, and analysis.
Identity recognition plays an important role in numerous facets of life, including automatic banking services, e-commerce, e-banking, e-investing, e-data protection, remote access to resources, e-transactions, work security, anti-theft devices, criminologic identification, secure entry, and entry registration in the workplace.
Utilized alone or integrated with other technologies such as smart cards, encryption keys, and digital signatures, biometrics are expected to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives.
Computerized systems use passwords and personal identification numbers (PIN) for user recognition. To maintain security, passwords have to be changed on a regular basis, imposing a substantial burden on the users.
Several advanced technologies have been developed for biometric identification and verification of a person's identity, the leading of which are fingerprint recognition, retina and iris recognition, face recognition, and voice recognition. However, these technologies have penetrated only limited markets due to complicated and unfriendly acquisition modalities, sensitivity to environmental parameters such as lighting conditions and background noise, and high cost. In addition, due to complicated acquisition procedures, the above technologies usually require operator attendance.
Fingerprint recognition is well-established and the most mature technology, however it has several drawbacks: the system cannot verify physical presence of the fingerprint owner and therefore is prone to deception, limiting its suitability for on-line applications; the optical sensor is a costly and fragile device, generally unsuitable for consumer markets; and it suffers from negative connotations related to criminology.
Retina scanning technologies are characterized by high performance. However, they require high-precision optical sensors, and are not user friendly as they require manipulation of head posture and operate on a very sensitive organ—the human eye. The optical sensor is costly and fragile.
Iris and face recognition systems are friendly technologies as they take an image from afar. However, they require digital photographic equipment and are sensitive to lighting conditions, as well as to pupil size variations and facial expressions, respectively. In addition, Iris recognition performance is degraded by dark glasses and contact lens usage, and face recognition may be deceived by impersonation.
Voice recognition is the most friendly technology, however it requires a low-noise setting and is highly sensitive to intrinsically variable speech parameters including intonation. Moreover, existing conventional recording technologies may be used to deceive speech based recognition systems.
Thus, a need exists for reliable and robust, hard to deceive (on-line and off-line), low cost, user friendly identity recognition technologies for stand alone applications as well as for integration with current security systems.